


No Dress Code: Hangin’ From a Telephone Wire

by GuileandGall



Series: No Dress Code [17]
Category: Saints Row
Genre: Collect Call, F/M, Fluff, Missing You, Phone Calls & Telephones, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-24 10:42:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13212087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuileandGall/pseuds/GuileandGall
Summary: The bass player for Pirate Hole realizes what has been missing from his usual outrageous tour shenanigans.





	No Dress Code: Hangin’ From a Telephone Wire

Eli never walked away from a party in his life, or a willing sexual partner for that matter, but at that moment all this left him feeling unsatisfied. So, he left. Stepped out of the room pulsing with his own music. Ended the barely started flirtation with a beautifully built, dark-eyed man that captured his attention for a moment. Walking down the hall, he could not shake the feeling of something missing. Stepping outside, he leaned on the banister of the breezeway between the two buildings of the motor lodge looking at the black sky that glowed with a golden tinge from the bright lights of the city. His fingers absently spun the ring on his middle finger, a silver skull.

It hit him the moment he looked at the ring. He knew precisely what was missing, or more importantly who. Heading back to his room, his hands moved over his pockets—nothing but condoms and several slips of paper holding random anonymous phone numbers. His room key was gone, again; it was one of those things she always teased him about.

Skirting the party, he wandered back to the stairwell and found a pay phone after a short search. His charm worked well enough to get the operator to initiate the collect call and she told him when to say his name. He did not hear anything until the voice said, “Caller say your name.”

Fingers tapping impatiently at the metal housing of the phone, he answered, “Eli.”

Then the line went dead again. He looked at the receiver in his hand and almost hung up the phone.

“E?” she said, her voice sounded strange. “Eli? Are you there?”

“Yeah. Sorry, thought it cut off.”

“What’s going on? Why are you calling me collect?”

“Lost the room key. And … I just wanted to talk to you?”

He heard her exhale a slow breath over the other end of the line. “Okay?” She sounded more relaxed than she had a moment ago.

“Didn’t mean to worry you, love.”

“Well, I just … You’ve never called me collect before. I worried something bad might have happened.”

Eli rubbed his thumb over some nameless phone number written in green marker on the shiny metal of the pay phone. “No, just realized—”

“Realized what?”

His mind ticked for a second before he had an answer that sounded better than telling her about the strange sensation. “How long it’s been?”

“Come now. We both know you could have anyone who came to the show.”

“I don’t want just anyone,” he replied with haste.

The clacking sound resounded across the line. “You know you don’t have to ask my permission every time.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Eli leaned his forehead against the cool surface of the phone, eyes closed imaging where she might be—in bed, in her favorite chair, sprawled across the sofa. “Come out this weekend.” The sound of a dish breaking suggested he guessed wrong. She was in the kitchen.

“What?”

“It’s Vegas. You said you’ve never been.”

“I have a job, Eli,” Furia argued. It was the same argument she had given him when he asked her to go with him at the start of the tour. She turned him down twice, saying it might only be two months, but she could not just walk away from the club for that long.

“It’s just two days.”

“Okay.”

A part of Eli expected her to agree on those terms, but even so a sense of pleasant surprise crept through him. Then that Cheshire cat grin spread across his face as deliberately as the tattooed hand that skimmed down the center of his chest. “Mmm, good. Now, what are you wearing?”

“You call me back when you’re in your room and I’ll tell you,” she replied with a giggle.

“Worried it will show up on the internet?”

“No.”

Eli hummed ravenously. “What makes you so sure?”

“You lost your phone again.” She knew as well as anyone who knew him that most of the “leaked” sex tapes that came out featuring Eli were put out by the rocker himself.

“How do you know that?”

Her laughter rang through the phone line and tickled down his spine. “You called me collect, mi pavo real.”

“Tell me and I’ll have a reason to get a new key.”

“Nada.”

Eli knew it might not be the whole truth, Soledad did not usually run around the house alone in the buff. Then again, she knew how Eli felt about lies, even little white ones. The thought of it being the truth prompted his hand to press across the front of his low-slung jeans.

“Now, go get your room key and call me back,” she told him. Before he could give her a cheeky answer or instigate more, the phone clicked and after a second or two of complete silence the dial tone purred in his ear, leaving him with no choice other than to retrieve a replacement key from the front desk.


End file.
